Mahmoud shrugged. “Perhaps he’s scared. First Nuri, then him.” “There have been others,” said Owen. “Why this sudden interest?” “He knows something that we don’t?” offered Mahmoud.
"If he does,” said Owen, “he’s not going to tell us.”
“He has his own people,” said Mahmoud.
“Guzman?”
“And others.”
A forage mule made its way soporifically towards them. Its load was so huge as almost to span the narrow street. Owen wondered if they would have to move, but at the last moment the mule was twitched aside and the load, bowing almost to the ground, grazed the table.
They were meeting at Mahmoud’s request. Later that morning he had rung Owen proposing a coffee before lunch.
Mahmoud waited until the mule had passed on down the street and then said: “I have been checking on the gun.”
“Find anything?”
“Part of a consignment missing last March from the barracks at Kantara. They suspected a sergeant but nothing was ever proved. All they could get him for was negligence-he was in charge of the store. He’s done six months and is due out about now.”
“Probably sold them,” said Owen.
Mahmoud nodded. “That’s what they thought.”
“No lead?”
“He wouldn’t talk.”
“He won’t talk now,” said Owen, “especially if he’s due out.”
“If he was told he’d be all right?”
“Out of the goodness of his heart? No chance.” “If he thought he was just shopping an Egyptian-” suggested Mahmoud tentatively.
His eyes met Owen’s.
He could be right, Owen was forced to admit. In the obscure code of the ordinary Tommy, shopping a mere Egyptian might not count.
“Just worth trying.”
“I was wondering-” began Mahmoud, and then hesitated.
Owen knew what he was thinking. It would have to be an Englishman and would probably need to be Army rather than civilian.
“Would you like me to have a go?”
“It might be best,” said Mahmoud.
Owen lunched at the Gezira and then, unusually, went back to his office. Late in the afternoon, when the sun’s fierce heat had softened, he went again into the Place Bab el Khalk.
He was in a light linen suit and wore a tarboosh, the pot-like hat of the Egyptian, on his head. With his dark Celtic colouring and the years of sunburn he looked a Levantine of some sort. He carried an Arabic newspaper.
He chose a tea-stall on the eastern side of the Place and perched himself on a stool. The tea-seller brought him a glass of Russian tea.
From where he sat he could see along the Sharia Taht er Rebaa to where the massive battlemented walls of the Mosque el Mouayad rose on the left. One or two little bunches of black-gowned figures were already beginning to spill out on to the sharia. From somewhere behind the Mosque came a confined noise which, as he listened, began to settle down into a rhythmic chanting.
“Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni."
The tea-seller came out from the other side of the counter and looked uneasily down the street.
“There will be trouble,” he said.
On the pavement behind him a barber was shaving a plump, sleepy-looking Greek. The barber put his razor in the bowl beside the chair and came out on to the street also.
“Yes,” he said, peering towards the mosque, “there will be trouble.”
The Greek opened one eye. “What trouble?”
“Students,” said the barber, wiping the soapsuds off his hands on to his gown.
“Again?” said the Greek. “What is it this time?” “I don’t know,” said the barber. “What is it this time?” he called to a-bean-seller at an adjoining stall.
The bean-seller was serving some hungry-looking students with bowls of ful madammas, red fava beans cooked in oil and garlic.
“What is it this time?” he asked of them.
“We don’t know,” said the students. “It is the students of el Azhar, not us.”
“They are going to Abdin Square,” volunteered one of the students, “to demonstrate against the Khedive.”
“Much good that will do,” said the bean-seller. “They will just get their heads busted.”
“Someone has to,” said the student.
“But not you,” said the bean-seller firmly.
“You sound like my father,” said the student.
“Your father and I,” said the bean-seller, “are men of experience. Learn from us.”
“Anyway, I cannot go with them today,” said the student. “I have my exams tomorrow.”
“Have not the el Azhar students exams also?” called the Greek.
The students shook their heads.
“They’re not like us,” they said.
Owen guessed them to be engineering students. Engineering, like other modern subjects, was studied at the governmental higher schools. At el Azhar, the great Islamic university of Cairo, the students studied only the Koran.
The students finished their bowls and left. The bean-seller began clearing away his stall. At the far end of the Taht er Rebaa a crowd was coming into view.
“You carry on shaving,” the Greek ordered. “I don’t want you running away before you’ve finished.”
“Who is running away?” said the barber. “There is still plenty of time.”
“I am running away,” said the bean-seller. “Definitely.”
At this time in the afternoon the Place Bab el Khalk was fairly empty. A few women, dressed in black and heavily veiled in this part of the city, were slip-slopping across the square, water-jars on heads, to fetch water for the evening meal. Men sat in the open air cafes or at the street-stalls drinking tea. Children played on the balconies, in the doorways, in the gutter.
The bean-seller apart, no one appeared to be paying much attention to the approaching demonstrators, though Owen knew they were well aware of them. When the time came, they would slip back off the streets-not too far, they wouldn’t want to miss anything-and take refuge in the open-fronted shops or in the houses. Every balcony would be crowded.
He could pick out the head of the column distinctly now. They were marching in disciplined, purposeful fashion behind three large green banners and were setting a brisk pace. Behind them the Sharia was packed with black-gowned figures.
Some of the more nervous cafe-owners were beginning to fold up chairs and tables and move them indoors. Obliging customers picked up their own chairs and took them into the shops and doorways, where they sat down again and continued their absorbing conversations. There were no women on the street now, and children were being called inside.
The barber wiped the last suds from the Greek’s face with a brave flourish.
The Greek felt his chin.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “What about here?”
“Perfect,” said the barber.
“Show me!” commanded the Greek.
The barber reluctantly produced a tin mirror and held it before him.
“It’s lop-sided,” complained the Greek. “You’ve done one side and not the other!”
“Both sides I have done,” said the barber, casting an uneasy glance down the street. “It is just that one side of your face is longer than the other.”
The Greek insisted, and the barber began to snip and scrape at the offending part.
The tea-seller lifted his huge brass urn off the counter and took it up an alleyway. Owen felt in his pocket for the necessary milliemes.
The procession was about a hundred yards away now. At this stage it was still fairly orderly. The students had formed up into ranks about twenty abreast and were marching in a disciplined column, though with the usual untidy fringe around the flanks, which would melt away at the first sign of trouble.
The barber dropped his scissors into a metal bowl with a clang and hurriedly pulled the protective cloth from off the Greek. The Greek stood up and began to wipe his face. The barber threw his things together and made off down a sidestreet. As he went, the Greek dropped some milliemes in the bowl.
Owen folded his newspaper and stepped back into the protective cover of a carpet shop. The shop was, like all the shops, without a front, but the carpets might prove a useful shield if things got really nasty.